Had to Happen

With shift after shift (after shift after shift??) of easy/"boring" days at work, it had to come to an end. It just HAD to...it wouldn't be "work" if every day was smooth as silk, easy as pie, slow as mud, right?! Sure, those days are AWESOME and I am able to give much more one on one attention/emotional support to my patients and/or their parents which I LOVE! However, work is work and every job has days that are more enjoyable than others.

I am SO thankful that my job has MANY more enjoyable days than not. And, I am SO thankful that I have learned to even put the harder days into perspective (due to some pretty amazing people God has placed in my life to remind me of such things!)

Thursday night, I went to dinner with my friend and "the baby". We ate at the Olive Garden and had a great visit! Today was her birthday, so we kind of celebrated that (the Easter bunny gave me a $25 gift card so it was mostly his treat...nice!) He WAS here in town to have minor surgery on Monday...WAS being the key word there because...

Yesterday afternoon he had to be admitted to my floor and I was the nurse who was "up" for an admission (it HAD to happen...I had at LEAST three shifts where I was "up" for an admission and none came) I suppose that is one reason maybe to not be friends with parents of my patients, but that's how it goes. Luckily, my "favorite" charge nurse was working and she helped out a ton. It is always busy when you get an admission, and there were lots of things that needed to be done. It was sad being there for all the stuff that hurts when we just had a fun little dinner the night before. But, he is still young and very forgiving :o)

Last night I made muffins to bring for my friend's birthday and to my co-workers. Definitely not the way she wanted to spend her birthday...especially with the way the day went! Since the baby was SO sick for so long, his veins do not like to cooperate very well. So, it typically takes multiple attempts for lab draws and very hard to start IVs...yes, one of the sadder parts of my job :o( We spent probably hours working on that IV today between trying to get a new one or saving the old one. 3:45 lunch breaks makes this nurse VERY crabby and I was not at all pleasant by that point. Of course, my other patients were "basically" neglected during this time and I actually snapped at one of the other moms. Yes, I really did (but did apologize...I honestly can only do one thing at a time even though way more than one thing needed to happen at that time and of COURSE her child is just as important...deep breath, need food!). I actually said something that left her with the response of "I am not a nurse, I do not know what you should give"...wow, oops! Definitely needed to take a step back and re-think how THAT conversation went!

Yes, it definitely was not one of the more "fun" days at work. However, this was my "perspective" to help me through...my day was not NEARLY as bad as the baby who spent what seemed like half the day getting poked with needles OR as bad as my friend who spent her birthday in the hospital away from the rest of her family with her child getting poked. Nope, eating lunch at 3:45 sure beats "sleeping" on a hospital couch with a plastic pillow with no privacy and crazy alarms. As terribly annoying as it was that another of my patients pressed the call light every five minutes to ask for his mom, I had to remind myself that less than 2 weeks ago no one really thought he would be able to talk, and weeks before that, he NEVER would have been able to press the call light (that did not stop me from unplugging the call light though...just being honest here!)

Oh how glad I am to have tomorrow off! I am SO going to sleep in!

My Magic Bullet replacement part came in the mail the other day so I am looking forward to making smoothies again.

I definitely forgot to send in the check for my house payment...nice...I better do that while I'm thinking about it!

Tomorrow my mom is going with me to Gymboree to spend the rest of my gym bucks...now that I know how to use them, it will be a MUCH more pleasant experience (although every mom and her kids will probably be there tomorrow...ha ha!) She also asked me what I wanted for "family dinner"...I will actually get to eat dinner while it is hot this week--yay!

Alrighty, time to sleep...something tells me I can use all the sleep I can get, especially with a "family dinner" in the plans :o)

Good night!